5.) Option B (for Bellows)
Bellows simply allow your lens to be father away from the camera – that is the primary job they perform. At one end of the bellows is the camera and at the other is the lens. The bellows take care of magnification and focus. The principle is as follows; the farther the lens is away from the camera the more the magnification.
I use an Asahi Pentax M42 Auto Bellows that mounts on a tripod and allows for the camera body to be moved closer and farther away via geared rails. You can purchase used or find inexpensive new bellows on eBay or Keh. Look for two geared rails, one that extends the bellows and one that moves the camera body, this combination makes focusing much simpler. All bellows will allow you to extend the bellows but not all bellows allow you to adjust the position of the camera relative to the subject. This second rail allows you to set the magnification desired with the bellows and then fine tune the focus by moving the camera/bellows closer or farter from the subject. The second geared rail is a must in my opinion, without it you may end up moving the tripod.A bellows is supper easy to use on a tripod. Simply adjust the bellows length to get the magnification desired and use the rail adjustment to move the camera closer and farther away to fine tune the focus. I really like this setup when shutter speed dictates the use of a tripod. You avoid the clumsy movement of the tripod in fractions of an inch required under Option A.
This bellows need to be mounted to your camera and depending on what bellows you have you will need to get the appropriate adapter (see Part V - Mount Matters). Since I use a Canon DSLR with an EOS mount and the bellows I own have M42 mounts, I needed a M42 to Canon EOS adapter
to mount my camera to the bellows.
Of course the bellows need a lens. And here you have a lot of choices. You could mount a dedicated Macro lens, such as the Vivitar 90mm macro (see Part IV - Option A - Dedicated prime macro). You can use a manual focus prime lens such as this Pentax SMC 55mm 1.8 lens. You can reverse mount a lens for some high power macro photos. I use enlarging lenses.
Read on under 6.) Enlarging Lenses to learn about using enlarging lenses for macro photography.
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